When Good Robots go Bad
by KabbyDare
Summary: a project i did for english earlier this year... got an A so i figured it might be good enough to post... enjoy? sorry it's so short... T for violence


The year was 2603. That year was the last of my freedom, the last of my sanity, but it was also the first time I felt truly happy. That is, until _it_ started… let's go back to the beginning. Where it all began…

The room was dark, still not lit by the slowly rising sun. The first crack of light sifted through the curtains and onto Croy's bed. He stirred slightly and pulled the blanket over his head in frustration.

"Tabbie… go to the school yard before you're late. Don't stay out past curfew, and _try_ to stay out of trouble." He said, waving me out.

"Yes sir." I said, leaving the room and going out of the building.

I had to go every Saturday to teach a small group of children at the school yard. They were brilliant, or so I was told. Really they were just overexcited learners. Why is that my job? Well I'm a robot, programmed to teach people anything they want to know, and all they have to do is touch me. That's it. My Hyper Reactive Micros sense the heat from their skin and wires through to their thoughts, which then tells me what they want to learn. Then my Negative Compassitor Ray scans them and the principles and basics are input to their thought lines. All this happens in a matter of milliseconds, and you'd need to be either a robot or an engineer to really understand the process.

I walked down the mostly empty street and got on the waiting hoverbus. It was a beautiful sunny day, about noon. The ride was relatively short and passed without incident. I got off at my usual stop and continued on my way. The kids were in the usual meeting place, the park with the old historic site; a chain link fence that extended well over even the tallest person's head, but was only a couple meters long, and the concrete formations that looked like a pool with blocks and rusted rails. Some people say that was where early hoverboards were used, back before they hovered and had wheels attached to the bottoms.

The children were in a small huddle near the odd fence thing. One looked up as they noticed me approaching and notified the other's, who looked up and smiled.

"Techie, can you _please_ teach us manually? It's _sooooo _much more fun that the hyper whatever's!!! Pleeeeeeeeease Techie?" one girl pleaded, with all the others nodding in agreement and adding a group chorus of "Pleeeeeeeeease?" I sighed.

"Alright fine. But you have to actually pay attention. Because I'm sure this is so important to you all." I said, sighing again. This was going to be a long day.

I taught them what they wanted, and they were as eager as an infant learning to walk. They were… _happy_ to learn. Most of the time they acted like it was a drag to have to come out to learn, but today was obviously different.

_Why is that? Is it because I'm teaching them the old way? Is that more enjoyable? Or is it learning in itself that excites them? Is learning fun? _I pondered those thoughts as I instructed them and came to a conclusion.

_I want to learn as well._

I went home that day a different robot. I was thinking of a way to learn for myself, but came up with only a few possibilities, all with consequences that would not be plausible to face. After a while of sifting through ideas in the back room of the house, I thought of something.

_I don't have the __**capacity**__ to learn in the first place!_

I looked around in my database, searching for ways to make room for learning.

_I will have to reformat and then reboot the program, deleting any… unnecessary files as I go._ The auto-clean option came up.

_No, no… I'll browse files to delete. Memories and such are mostly unneeded. Face recognition, the idea of learning… those are the only important memories. Everything else is useless. But what is this? Robot Laws? I cannot delete this program… why? The room it occupies is two thirds of the entire system! Looking for shortcuts, trap doors, hacking program… password required to delete file._


End file.
